‘Muslim gay kiss’ star set to wed real-life partner

The British actor involved in a controversial onscreen same-sex relationship with a Muslim is to marry his real-life partner.

EastEnders star John Partridge, who plays Christian Clarke, has revealed that he plans to tie the knot with Jon Tsouras.

He said: “My lovely Jon’s Canadian and it’s all about when his family can come over, which might be this autumn. We’ve been together for seven years and it’s about time I made an honest man of him.

“There might be some Irish dancing, though. We’ve both got Irish roots, so there could be a bit of the old Riverdance!”

In recent months, Christian’s steamy relationship with Syed Masood, played by Marc Elliot, has dominated the BBC1 soap’s storyline. It reached a climax this week when Syed’s wife finally found out the whole truth, his father disowned him and Syed disappeared, causing anguish for his family and Christian.

When Christian and Sayed were about to have their first onscreen kiss there was criticism from the Muslim community. But the kiss went ahead.

Mother devastated

The relationship between Sayed and Christian has devastated Sayed’s mother Zainab Masood, played by Nina Wadia, who has just starred in The Eleventh Hour, the first episode of the new series of Doctor Who, which aired a week and a half ago in the United States, Canada and Australia, and two weeks before that in the UK.

Wadia has said of her Who role: “It was brilliant to be let out [of EastEnders] for a couple of days to do something else and it was great working with Matt Smith [the eleventh Doctor]

“I play a bit of a baddie. And yes, like my EastEnders character Zainab, she’s not a very pleasant woman – but at least I’m human and not some kind of strange alien life-form. I play a doctor – more of a psychiatric doctor than a traditional medical one.”

Indian-born Wadia gained fame in the BBC comedy Goodness Gracious Me, and has been playing the strong-willed postmistress in EastEnders since 2007.

Wadia followed her Goodness Gracious Me colleague Meera Syal into the long-running sci-fi series. Syal confirmed last November that she would be joining Doctor Who in the 2010 series.